a silent competition
by the drowsy poet
Summary: "Both the onlookers, but you're the boy with the sketchbook and he's the boy with the camera. It's a fight to the death, a shallow competition, a silent match with just two solitary players." DeanColin. A series of encounters of the unusual sort.


**A/N: **May or may not be my last story for a while. NaNoWriMo calls, dontcha know. This is my entry for the Slash/Femslash Random Pairings Challenge on HPFC, and, true to its name, it is random. Very much so. Also Colin is used for the Character Diversity Bootcamp, prompt being 'birthday.' I hope you enjoy.

warnings: boy on boy. not so much a really romantic pairing, more a few (somewhat fleeting) encounters of the confusing kind. hope you understand.

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**.one.**

The first time you see him, he's only 11 years old.

You're looking over at the new first years in their line with a poorly concealed smirk, and you snort as Shay makes some mindless joke about the 'feckin' titches.' It doesn't occur to you that you're only a year older than them, barely even that, because they're too small, too scared. Just tiny little creatures with sleeves that cover their hands and worried, blinking eyes.

The Great Hall is magical on that one night. You've had a summer of pictures that stay frozen, of football matches and greasy chip butties, of a mirror that doesn't tell you to tuck in your shirt, or: _pull up your socks, mister_. You feel alive and happy, and it's no wonder you're not paying attention to something as monotonous as The Sorting.

But then the Gryffindor table is cheering suddenly: great booming catcalls, and you look up.

The boy who stumbles off the stool has a grin that splits his face in two, and you can't help but laugh. You under_stand._ You understand his excitement, the way his eyes light up in wonder, because_ oh look, that's a ghost over there,_ and _what, the staircases_ **_move?_**

So you laugh, and you clap him on the back with the others as he takes a place on the bench. His feet don't touch the ground. You watch them dangle for a second, and wonder who this little boy is with his hand-me-down Muggle trainers and odd socks.

Then the food arrives, and your thoughts vanish with the prospect of roast potatoes and infinite helpings of chocolate pudding.

**.two.**

Your second meeting is even less memorable, because this time you don't realise it's him. Not until he mentions it, some 3 years later.

It's your 13th birthday. Everyone is smiling at you just that little bit wider, because now you're a teenager and now you're_ old, _and for just a day you're allowed to be selfish and accept that it's due time you got your attention.

Then Shay turns up with a cake, all green icing and candles, and it doesn't dawn on you that maybe this isn't the best idea until _**whoosh**, _you realise that it _def_initely wasn't.

Through the leaping orange flames you hear a faint '_pop,' _as though someone has just pulled up a plug. And it might be your imagination, but as the smoke clears away, you see a small boy holding something up to his face. Then there's a blinding flash of light, and he's gone.

As the day draws to a close you forget the strange encounter. You have cake and friends and presents, and nothing else matters.

(When he tells you about it later, sometime in a broom cupboard somewhere, you wonder if he ever kept the photograph.)

(Perhaps it was lost beneath the stacks of Harry _eating_ and Harry in _class_ and Harry _this_ and Harry _that, _and wait, are you seriously _jealous_?)

(You don't like the answer to that question.)

**.three.**

Is it a competition?

You're both the onlookers, but you're the boy with the sketchbook and he's the boy with the camera. It's a fight to the death, a shallow competition, a silent match with just two solitary players.

It's your fourth year now, and yet again it's _Him_ acting the golden boy. Champion number 4 in the so-called _Tri_wizard Tournament. And you're there, sketching it out: the dragon, the egg, the Ball. With each passing event, you're on the sidelines. Armed with pencil and parchment, memories etched on the grooved surface in a bizarre blur of smudged lines and cross hatches.

They smile as you show them, but they don't want you. They don't want surreal swirls of colour and shape, they want realism. A snapshot of Him being Him, Him _alone_, no embellishments or fancies. And so they call on him, a different him: Colin Creevey, the boy with the camera and the grin.

So you scowl at his excitedly bobbing figure, waiting in dull anticipation for someone to come out of this goddamned maze and to be crowned the goddamned Champion and for this competition to just be _over._

_Jealousy doesn't suit you, Dean._

When you see Him appear, bathed in the light of victory, you're happy. If just for a second.

Out whips your sketchbook. It's only until the lines unfold beneath you that you see there's a boy in his arms, and it's Cedric Diggory: unmoving, so wondrously still in the pale semi-darkness. Your cry is in perfect harmony with the onlookers beside you.

Your hands find the comfort of others.

He screams from the stadium.

The fingers laced in your own tighten, and maybe it should bother you that you don't know who you are holding, but it doesn't. You shake in each other's grip. When the night is over, you depart without a word.

The next morning his face is streaked with tear tracks, and when you look at each other it's with something akin to a smile. Well: if smiling weren't so foreign in the current climate.

You draw a boy with a grin too wide for his face, with bright blond hair that falls into eyes that are both blue and green and grey at the same time.

You don't draw the tremble in his lip or the tightness in his jaw, because you can't let yourself break now you've only just been fixed.

**.four.**

"Dean?" he says, gazing up at you with fast blinking eyes.

"Yes, Colin?" you reply.

"Er, I was wondering if we could...be, well, partners. I mean, only if you want! It's just I know that Seamus isn't here and you looked alone and I thought perhaps you might - "

"Sure."

"Oh. Okay. Can we start, then?"

"We can start, then."

**.five. **

His eyes are wide.

"Kiss me?"

"Okay."

And, bodies colliding, you do.

.**six.**

You tell yourself that it was rebound: she gets with Harry, you get with the first person _you_ see.

But then your brain, your _ever_ unhelpful brain, reminds you that _act_ually - you saw Hannah Abbott, Katie Bell, Michael Corner. Cho Chang outside the Charms classroom. Ernie Macmillan patrolling the corridor, shiny Prefect badge gleaming in the Autumn sunlight.

Colin Creevey with his camera. He's waving.

"Colin," you say. Your voice comes in a rasp.

"Dean - hey! What's up?"

You ignore him and walk a few steps to the left. You can't decide whether it's by fate or your own awful luck that he is standing right next to a broom cupboard.

_Fate, for sure._

"What are you doing?"

You grip the door knob within trembling hands. It swings open.

"Dean?"

You walk inside. His voice sounds muffled now.

"_Dean?"_

You feel the weight of the door pushing back on you, and you smile.

He walks in.

**.seven.**

It's finally over, but in some ways, it feels like it's only just begun.

The body of little Colin Creevey lies lifeless amongst the rubble.

Your memories come back flying.

Feet that don't touch the floor. Candles and birthdays and mysterious popping noises. A silent competition. Awkward half-conversations. Broom cupboards. A not-really rebound.

_Kiss_.

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**A/N:** Review and make Dean happy.

sidenote: After the hassles of november, I'm thinking of writing a harry potter/sherlock crossover. So, if any of you are potterlockians, be warned, 'CAUSE JAWN AND SHERLAWK ARE COMING TO HOGWARTS.


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